Lucky's Girl (36 page)

It was obvious what had happened too.

Someone had waited in one of the driveways dotting the woods and had rammed him. He was probably going sixty when he’d been hit. From the skid marks of the other vehicle – a pickup from the look of the treads – they’d probably been going forty. That pickup had shot out of that driveway so fast there’d been no way they could have righted themselves.

This shit had been intentional.

And not a single person had driven past this? Nobody? No one had noticed a car on fire? No one had noticed that this was a hit and run? No one had heard anything? And where was his goddam body?

Right then, he saw the first one of
them
.

Something about the sheer improbability of the wreckage had kept Torgeson in the cruiser. He stared in disbelief, checking his radio and cell. Doc Pete had likely been murdered and no one had driven to the next town. This place was cut off from the world… and no one could leave.

He got chills, and then he got
scared
.

The man was standing further down the bend in the middle of the road, completely naked, covered in mud and leaves. Bughatch fucking lunatic, pure straitjacket material.

Naked, covered in filth.

Watching him
…

Not spying, he wasn’t hiding, in fact he was acting more like a sentry. A lookout on a road heading into a town in the middle of nowhere which was now cut off from the rest of the world.

I can’t call it in, plus it’s a thirty minute drive to the next town…

Every expectation would be to get within hailing distance and raise the State or the closest Townies, but he needed to try to raise Jerry. He might be a sack of shit, but he needed to be warned about whatever this was.

He flipped the blue and reds, hailing Jerry on the radio.

***

“If you’re gonna press yourself up against the glass like a freak, please have the goddam courtesy to hose yourself off first.”

Jerry was speaking to no one and to Lucky’s Faithful simultaneously. They’d cut the power a while back. First the phones had gone and later the electricity, and now they were standing in front of the station catatonic and bug-eyed, every few minutes cupping their hands over their eyes in an attempt to peer through into the office. Jerry had figured out pretty quickly that they couldn’t see inside or hear anything if they kept it pretty quiet, so now he was standing right on the opposite side of the glass from them, shaking his head in amazement at what had become of his fellow townsfolk. He knew these two. Both were DWI cases who had gone to the Rev’s AA meeting, gotten clean and gotten saved. They didn’t work much, collected SSI, but had stayed off his radar. But then Lucky had shown up and now they had him hemmed in his station.

And like the rest of them, had gone feral and native.

This is what cavemen had looked like. Bodies painted with mud and shit, pasted with leaves, like they’d stepped out of a National Geographic article on headhunters from the South Pacific. Primitive, far more primitive than the American Indians the Europeans had first come into contact with. More like the kind of troglodytes who’d first crossed the land bridge from Asia. More man than animal, but far more animal than we would associate with humans.

A grim smile spread across his lips. He wished that little fuck Shelby Stiles,
Professor
of North American Paleohistory were here. He’d probably love this. Probably wouldn’t be able to explain
why
they were looking at it but would at least have told them what it was.

He’d said that a far flung precursor to the Menominee Indians had dug a ring around Grove Island, connecting it to the Paint River, and that the Island wasn’t even really an island, or at least it hadn’t started out that way. It was a
mound
, created by a group of
mound-builders,
an important religious or burial site. If he had been right it would have been the oldest one in North America. But, unlike any other site of its kind, they’d dug a trench to the river to surround it with water.

All of this had allegedly happened before the Egyptians and Sumerians.

Then he heard the distinctive crackly warble of a police radio. It was in the car outside: the driver’s side window was wound down, and only twenty feet from the front door. He heard his name, some static, then his name repeated. Then more impatiently, “Torgeson.”

Next thing he saw was a glare of red and blues, dazzling and bright as Torgeson pulled into the parking lot and two pod people walking briskly over to his cruiser. He quickly rolled up his windows, and barked into the loudspeaker. “Step away from the car!”

They kept on walking. They just put their hands and faces to the glass.
At least they’re consistent.
And Torgeson’s loudspeaker had stirred up more of them. They were joined by three others from the parking lot of Frankie’s bar, and more were coming, from all directions.

Torgeson’s cruiser was now surrounded by freaks pressing their faces up against the glass, trying the door handles, attempting to prevent him from moving. He wasn’t having any of it. He pushed them out of the way and ended up with two on his hood, giving him a clear space. He pulled forward faster than they were able follow then jammed it into reverse, dropping the two from his hood onto the pavement.

Jerry didn’t waste this distraction. He unlatched the door and snuck over to his cruiser, grabbed the handheld and slipped back inside the station.

“Torgeson, this is Jerry, copy.”

“Okay, Jerry, first off; what the fucking fuck is going on here?”

“No time, get out of the dead zone and call the cavalry.”

“Um, fuck you Jerry. What am I looking at here?”

“Cult brainwashing. Manson, Jim Jones and the fucking Weathermen,
just go
.”

Torgeson was driving in loops between the parking lot of the station and Frankie’s bar.

“You know Doc Pete is dead and it looks like someone crashed into him on purpose?”

“I heard. Torgeson, just fucking go. And watch out that they don’t do the same to you.”

“Jerry, I’m going to pull this cruiser in front of the station, then you’re going to get in it, and we’re going to go. Do you understand me?”

“I can’t. I can’t explain why either, but they’ll kill you before they let that happen. Lucky needs me for some reason. Now fucking go you stupid fuck!”

Then they both heard it; the unmistakable sound of full auto gunfire.

Torgeson hit the siren and was gone.

CHAPTER 15

Frankie and Errol knew the church would be completely full so instead they went with plan B. The Rev’s house,
Lucky’s
house now.

They took the jeep up through the trails behind Lucky’s, sneaking around the side to the front. Before they’d even rounded the corner they were hit by the smell of shit. Lots of it. Shit and piss, with more shit and piss on top. Passing underneath the windows they knew the smell was coming from inside. This wasn’t a septic system problem or a broken pipe: people had been shitting all over the inside of the house for days.

A little boy and girl were sitting on the front porch, staring out into nothing. Both were filthy, but unlike the other townsfolk at least they had clothes on, although they hadn’t bathed in days or changed their attire.

Errol squinted.
Jake and Jenny
.

The two men hadn’t been noticed. Two wheezy middle-aged men in Kevlar space suits and they hadn’t been noticed. It was like they weren’t even paying attention. Errol waved Frankie back, handing over his AK so the kids wouldn’t see it. He stepped around the corner, clearing his throat. “Hi kids, is um, your dad around?”

Errol cringed at his stupid words, but it barely seemed to matter. They hardly acknowledged his presence, merely turning to look at him.

He tried again. “Is Abby home, are you kids here by yourselves?”

Jenny’s face barely moved as she spoke. “Our father isn’t here.”

Errol nodded, glancing to his side where Frankie stood with the guns.

“I saw your dad earlier, he looked pretty beat up. You kids wanna go see him?”

Jenny shook her head. “My father will be wedding me tonight.”

The words came out before Errol even thought about it. “That’s really fucked up, kid.”

Jenny finally acquired a facial expression; haughty contempt. “You’re the little man who pissed his pants. Our God is here, Our God is now. Soon the System will be swept away and Pigs like you will die!”

Errol just stood there with his mouth open, looking stupid. He glanced back over to Frankie who gave him an equally stupid look in return.

But then the little boy spoke. “We’re still gonna ask my grampa if it’s okay for Jenny and Lucky to get married.”

She twirled around at her brother. “You shut up! Grampa is part of the System, just like Dad is. He’s a Pig, Lucky said so and all Pigs must be…”

Jake slapped her across the face, hard. She fell off the porch, then stared back up at him like he was a war criminal. He spoke quietly. “Don’t you ever say that again. My grampa fought the gooks in the war and didn’t dodge the draft like a sissy. He ain’t no Pig!”

Errol interjected. “That’s right, Son, you need to talk to Grampa because…”

The front door opened and a wall of fecal stench hit them. It was ripe, rotting human shit, and there was a lot of it. Two shit-covered men ran straight for Errol and were on him in seconds. They knocked him to the ground, one straddling him, dropping two hard punches to Errol’s face. The other grabbed his legs to hold him still.

They hadn’t seen Frankie, holding a Krinkov in each hand by the foregrip. The first one crashed across the side of the man’s head holding Errol’s legs. The second came down across the surprised face of the other man, his nose popping like a zit.

Jenny launched catlike at him, but Jake caught her legs midflight, pulling her to the ground. She screamed, the terrible cry of a little girl on fire, punching and clawing red rakes across his face. This was no little girl having a tantrum, this was a little girl going homicidal.

Frankie yanked Jake off of his sister while Errol tried to subdue Jenny. She wasn’t going to be subdued. She bit into Errol’s forearm, sinking her teeth to the gums, and shook her head like a…

Then they heard the growls from inside. The growls turned to a roaring barking, with paws pounding the front door, hard.

Errol dropped her. “Fuck!”

The front window exploded, two wolves launching outwards. The first flew over Jenny onto Frankie, jaws clamping the Kevlar collar of his vest, shaking him like tree in a tornado. He dropped the guns, letting out a silly string of sheep-like bleating.

The second Wolf was giving Errol a similar thrashing, but the Kevlar wouldn’t give any purchase to the wolf’s fangs.

Then there was a loud metallic click-clack, both man and wolf stopping all motion.

“Grampa said the gook’s guns were better than ours.”

And there was a long, loud blast of gunfire.

***

Torgeson guesstimated the individual emptying an AK-47 probably didn’t have a type three weapons permit, and that Elton’s problems had gone from sick and surreal to mass hysteria warzone.

It sounded like it had come from the vicinity of the Rev’s house.

He’d really liked the Rev, and knew that Elton would fall apart in his absence. He just hadn’t been counting on this. The naked shit-smeared freaks were everywhere, but luckily, so far none of them had been
armed.

Jerry’s voice crackled. “Torgeson, do not go in there! Whatever it is, don’t go there, just go get backup!”

Torgeson switched off the radio
. Sorry Jerry, but you’re an incompetent and a coward, fuck you.

He tore down the Rev’s driveway, seeing two men in full Kevlar tac-suits with AK-47 carbines, two filthy little kids, a dead wolf, and two shit-men crawling on the ground in a daze. He also noticed they were the focal point of increasing numbers of the shit-freaks coming from all directions.

When it rains it pours, especially in Elton.

Torgeson couldn’t help it, he laughed and slammed to a halt, jumping out, Glock in hand. “Drop the guns! Now!”

Errol looked while Frankie’s face was pure confusion. This was an apocalypse of clusterfuck. “It’s me. Errol…
the Mayor
!”

Torgeson wasn’t having it. “Fuck you mailman, drop the gun!”

Frankie dropped his gun and jerked his hands up in the air. “I… surrender!”

Errol was holding the gun by the forestock, putting his other hand in the air. “Torgeson, right? With the Staties? We got a big problem here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Just as Errol had finished speaking the first one reached Torgeson. He kept his pistol trained on Errol and Frankie but whipped out his tear gas spray catching him dead in the face. The shit-man dropped, letting out a piteous wail, falling to his knees and howling.

Another emerged from the trees to tackle Errol, another came behind Torgeson also to be blasted with tear gas. More were emerging every second. Now Frankie was wrestling one too. Two middle-aged men in heavy gear fighting with tireless feral opponents.